Small merchandise items are frequently displayed for sale by means of apertured panels on which are mounted outwardly extending display hooks. The merchandise items, typically packaged on cards or other special packaging is suspended on the display hooks such that the merchandise can be easily viewed by a customer and individual items can be easily removed by the customer for purchase.
Modern mass merchandising stores place a very high value upon display panel area, and pay close attention to the amount of sales derived from a given area of display wall. In this respect, suppliers seeking to have their product displayed for sale in a large chain store system, for example, may be required to pay very large sums of money in order to have access to relatively small product display area in each of the stores outlets. As a result, the suppliers of merchandise are very concerned with the layout of the display area provided to them, to accommodate the display of a maximum number of articles within the limits of such space. The display board itself provides only a limited range of adjustability. Typically, for example, openings in the board are provided at one inch spacing, such that adjustment of the position of the back plate of the hooks is necessarily done in one-inch increments. In many cases, however, an optimized package spacing may require a much smaller adjustment of the packaging position, possibly as little as an eighth or a quarter of an inch, for example, to avoid interference between side by side displays.
The nature of the above problem was recognized in the Thalenfeld et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,688,683, which provided a back plate consisting of a metal base and a plastic socket for mounting a display hook, in which the plastic socket is mounted on the metal base for limited lateral sliding movement. While providing some improvement in display density, this proposal had certain disadvantages, among which was the additional cost of a two-part structure for the metal base and the laterally movable plastic socket.
In accordance with the present invention, a novel and improved hook back plate is provided, which is a one-piece molding of plastic material, and which incorporates multiple hook-mounting sockets at different vertical levels on the back plate. While the back plate itself may be repositioned only in one inch vertical increments, the hook supported by the back plate may be selectively positioned in one of the multiple vertical sockets such that, for a given position of the back plate, the hook may be located at two or three different vertical positions on the display panel. The adjustable vertical positioning of the hook, relative to available back plate positions on the perforated panel board, provides a high degree of flexibility in the arrangement of the display space, which is particularly significant in view of the high degree of variability in the length of displayed packages.
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, the one-piece back plate is designed to provide multiple vertical hook-mounting positions, while at the same time being capable of high speed injection molding with relatively uncomplicated molds, such that the back plate may be manufactured at a suitably low cost.
In one embodiment of the invention, the display hook is adapted for mounting in one of a multiple vertical locations on the back plate, while being substantially fixed in its lateral positioning. In another embodiment, the multiple hook-mounting sockets at the several vertical locations on the back plate also provide for a significant lateral adjustment of the hook relative to the back plate such that both vertical and lateral positioning adjustment of the hook is enabled for a given back plate position on the display panel. The arrangement allows the display space allotted to a given supplier to be easily optimized for maximum product display.
For a more complete understanding of the above and other features and advantages of the invention, reference should be made to the following detailed description of preferred embodiments of the invention, and to the accompanying drawings.